FIFA Street

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It's like NBA Street with a soccer ball, minus all the fun. Full GameCube review.

By Douglass C. Perry

There is no doubt in my mind that EA has worked hard to create new innovations in sports games in the last four years, whether it's creating exciting new feature sets or perfecting the use of the analog stick in football or boxing. Just a few short years ago, EA's fierce competitive and ambitious nature resulted in the gleaning of NBA Showtime, the natural grandchild of NBA Jam, and took on the mantle of arcade hoops king as a result. FIFA Street, however, is not NBA Street. I knew NBA Street, he was a great game and my personal friend, and you, FIFA Street, you're no NBA Street.

More precisely, FIFA Street is the Frankenstein of soccer games. Its makers grafted on the progression structure and tricks of NBA Street, strapped on a mish-mash of mo-cap animations, unlockables, and perhaps some of the worst music and voice work ever known to humankind, and then one late wintry night, when the rain poured down hard and lighting struck, the creators of this thing flipped the super electrode switch and watched the force of un-Godly nature madly course through its invention.

Up it came, sizzling with all if its various limbs and bolts sticking out at odd angles, and FIFA Street stood and looked around. It groaned this horrible, unfathomable raspy voice, chanting in polyrhythmic world-beat tunes, and just started chatting. Oh God! The chatting! The endless chattering of raspy English barrel house-ska nonsense! And it moved around a bit, kicking a soccer ball off fences, and EA thought, "By God, our new creation, it's ALIVE!!!!"

Gameplay After several nights of playing FIFA Street, I realized my first impressions of FIFA Street are the same as my final ones, only now that I've played 15 hours of it I'm somewhat bitter. EA's new BIG Street game is one that's so far removed from the actual game of soccer it's pathetic. If you watch soccer or have ever played Winning Eleven 8 and then go directly to FIFA Street, you'll wonder what the hell you're supposed to do. The game doesn't work like a proper soccer game in any sense of the word. Sure, it's designed as an indoor soccer game, a three-on-three, fast-circuit, fast-action street game, from the streets of Brazil or whatever, and in a sense, that could be cool. But the final conclusion here is that it plays like a badly grafted NBA Street game on a soccer pitch.

So, I'm walking at an angle. What's so funny?

You're not meant to play it like soccer. You're meant to play it like NBA Street. That is to say, you're supposed to trick the hell out of your meter, work to fill up your Gamebreaker, and pull off fantastic, super athletic moves. But no matter what level you analyze it on, the game breaks down badly. It's just not that much fun. It's well crafted, well thought out, or well imagined. It's just a damn shame.

First, the Gamebreaker itself. In NBA Street the idea behind the 'Breaker is to build up and launch it to shift the balance of power from your opponent to yourself. It's a neat arcade tool in your quiver of tricks. It subtracts points from your opponent and adds them to your total. In FIFA Street, however, no points are subtracted from your opponent. And none are given to you, except for the point you earn if you've actually scored a goal. Your shot seems to be more powerful and it looks as if you can aim your shot, as it the feature slows time down. But, on a fundamental Street level, the Gamebreaker isn't actually a Gamebreaker at all. It's pretty worthless -- certainly less useful than the rather sketchy Gamebreaker in NFL Street.

Second, the game barely feels like soccer. It's more of an excuse to pull off tricks and freely and brutally slide-tackle your opponent. Admittedly, there is a certain sense of freedom and initial excitement when you pull off that first wall-pass and then convert it to a score. Or when you learn to tap pass the ball into the air, juggling it from player to player until you've found the opening in the defense, and bam! You bicycle kick the ball in. Admittedly, the first couple times you do that, it feels really good. The drag is that once you've done it a few times, the feeling doesn't get better. They're tricks, shallow arcade tricks that quickly diffuse in novelty and excitement. Quite quickly you'll come to realize the game is based entirely in these tricks, and the more you use them the better you get, systematically eliminating the need to know how to play soccer, learn its strategies, skills, depth, or nature. I noticed how EA didn't even use the word "soccer" in its title. Quite fitting, indeed.